Eretz Israel is our unforgettable historic homeland...The Jews who will it shall achieve their State...And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind.(Theodor Herzl, DerJudenstaat, 1896)

We offer peace and amity to all the neighbouring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and development of the Middle East.(From Proclamation of the State of Israel, 5 Iyar 5708; 14 May 1948)With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America, Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.... For the global jihad, Israel may be the first objective. But it will not be the last.(Friends of Israel Initiative)

'There is nothing remotely progressive in this campaign to boycott everything Israeli, with its double standards about various nations’ behaviour and its shrill rhetoric about everything that comes from Israel being covered in Palestinian blood. This movement is not designed to have any kind of positive impact in the Middle East but rather is about making certain Western activists feel righteous and pure through allowing them to advertise how Israeli-free their lives are. It’s illiberal, because it effectively demands the censoring of Israeli academics and performers; it’s hypocritical, because it is led by people who are only too happy to use iPhones made in undemocratic China and to vote for the Labour Party, which, er, bombed the hell out of Middle Eastern countries for the best part of 10 years; and it has unfortunate ugly echoes of earlier campaigns to boycott Jewish shops and produce. So three cheers for Ms Johansson for taking a very public stand against this right-on pressure to treat Israel as the most evil nation on Earth.'

Hain leaves Downing Street in 1969 (Guardian photo)

Long before Omar Bargouti dreamed up the BDS Movement, and when Arafat's brand "Palestinian" was of fairly new mintage, but catching on fast among the leftwing cognoscenti, there was a bovver boy on the British political scene. His name was Peter Hain; he craved the limelight; and he got it, for his antics ensured that he was often in the headlines.

'During the 1970s, before defecting to Labour and eventually becoming
an MP and a minister under Blair and Brown as well as a member of Red Ed
Miliband’s present team, the anti-Israel serpent in the
still-pro-Israel British Liberal Party’s bosom was Peter Hain. A South
African-born anti-apartheid activist with a penchant for publicity, he
was chairman of the Young Liberals, and combined campaigning against
white rule in South Africa with a parallel crusade against Israel’s very
existence. Decades before the idea caught on in sections of the
Israel-demonising left, Hain had made the replacement of Israel by a
“Secular Democratic State of Palestine” the leitmotif of his frequent
inveighing against the Jewish State.

Thus, reported
the Jewish Chronicle (5 September 1975), “Calls for the destruction of
Israel as a state and for British Government recognition of the
Palestine Liberation Organisation were made by more than 1500 pro-Arab
supporters who marched from Speakers’ corner to Downing Street on Sunday
while the Jewish rally was in progress.” Flanked by some 500 police
officers, marchers included Communists, Marxists, Young Socialists,
Young Liberals, as well as hundreds of Palestinians, Surians, Iraqis and
other Arabs. Hain called on “radicals on the left-wing in Britain” to
fight for the Palestinian cause.

He was even mean-minded enough to
oppose the migration of Soviet Refuseniks to Israel.' [Emphasis added]

Hain's Israel-demonising past is not as well-known as it should be

Few individuals younger than myself (I was living and working in London at the time) will have memories of Hain's outrageous contentions, and how deeply wounding his much-flaunted Israel-baiting was to members of the Anglo-Jewish community.

Hain's stance dismayed the Liberal Party's leadership and its old guard (we're talking of a time when to be Liberal with a large L still meant to be a classical liberal with a small l, in the tradition of the old Manchester Guardian– stalwartly pro-Zionist under editor C. P. Scott, long before it evolved into today's wretched London-based Guardian rag – and the then elder statesman of the Liberal Party Jo Grimond).

By the time the ambitious Mr Hain had morphed into a Labour Party Cabinet member, he had fallen silent on the issue, toeing the party line as he was bound to do. He was even tipped as a future British Prime Minister. (Shudder.)

This week, the heinous Mr Hain has been at it again, albeit in a more cautious manner than his no-room-for-argument enfant terrible manner of yore. To quote from an online Welsh source yesterday, evidently utilising a press release circulated by Hain:

'Peter Hain will make a major speech tonight [Thursday] in which he will warn that the long-term goal of a two-state peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians may no longer be achievable and claim that a one-state solution is now “back on the agenda”.

The former Welsh Secretary and Middle East minister at the Foreign Office will not endorse calls for the creation of a binational state but will ask: “Instead of living in constant fear of the enemy within as well as without, might it be more fruitful for Israel to seek a settlement legislating for the rights of Palestinians and Arab-Israelis within a new common state to end the conflict?”

In a public lecture at Swansea University, the Neath MP will state that he has favoured a two-state solution but is “increasingly unsure about whether it’s still achievable” because “the land earmarked for a viable Palestinian state has been remorselessly occupied by Israeli settlers.”

Claiming that support is growing for a single state, he will say: “Palestinians on both sides are now questioning the two-state strategy to an even greater degree. Negotiations have so far failed, as has a reliance on the US to deliver Israeli cooperation.

“The two-state option was itself originally conceived as a compromise and one likely to be particularly painful for the Palestinian refugee community. All of which explains why in academic and activist circles the one-state option is back on the agenda.

“There are now a number of different campaigns for the creation of a single democratic, secular state for Jews and Arabs, made up of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.”

Mr Hain, who as Northern Ireland Secretary played a key role in bringing Ian Paisley’s DUP and Sinn Fein together in the Stormont executive, will argue: “[If] Israel’s relentless expansion into Palestinian territories cannot be stopped then we must face one of two possible outcomes.

"The first is that all Palestinian presence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem remains in a permanent and ever-more formalized ‘Bantustan status’, islands of minimal self-governance with the continued denial of basic rights, facing ongoing pressure, perpetual insecurity and possible future physical removal.

"The second is that they are absorbed into a common Israeli-Palestinian state with the opportunity for pluralism and human rights advancement.

“Is that solution now the only one capable of stopping the cycle of violence and preserving Israel’s potential to become a force for unity and peace, instead of a beleaguered source of division and a target for attack?

"And if the window for the two-state solution is indeed closing, then should the EU, the US and the UK make it plain to Israel that a one-state alternative may be the only one available to ensure its security?”

He will ask what type of state would be “politically feasible and deliverable,” stating: “Could a federal or con-federal state provide a way forward, with common security, a unified economy, common civil rights and guarantees of religious freedom for Jews and Muslims, but considerable political autonomy for the territories within it of ‘Israel’ and ‘Palestine’? How then might Israeli and Palestinian security forces be integrated?

“These are fundamental, difficult and complex questions – but, if successfully answered, could a common state solution more easily resolve the deadlock than the two-state solution I and many others have long-favoured?

“I remain uncertain. But I ask because I do not see how either the Israelis or the Palestinians can secure their legitimate objectives by perpetuating for still more decades their unsustainable and unstable predicament, with a two-state solution slipping away while violence and terrorism lurks constantly.”....'

Given the fact that he has advocacy of a single state lurking in his past, Hain's approach to this question this time smacks of testing the waters, or to state it more accurately, testing the reaction of Labour Party members. The question, though, is why? Since he's about to turn 63, it is presumably not through ambition to ride to the party's leadership on the coat tails of anti-Zionism that's impelled Hain to make such a speech. Or is it? (He made an unsuccessful bid for the leadership a few years ago.) Are the speech's connotations more sinister than would seem at first glance? Has Hain changed his spots? Time alone will tell.

The Guardian journalist Jonathan Freedland, writing yesterday on the Jewish Chronicle website, is evidently unaware that Hain has form on the issue, that he used when young to make strident, hurtful, unambiguous calls for the dismantling of Israel and its replacement by a "secular democratic state".

Freedland is in my opinion a tad too jejune when he observes:

'If you want to know what a politician really thinks, wait till he or she leaves office. It’s when politicians no longer have to court votes, or worry about party discipline, that they finally speak their true mind.

Plenty will say that explains this week’s intervention by the former Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain. On Thursday, he was due to give a public lecture at Swansea University, departing from the position he has held for the past two decades and which represents the consensus of the international community: that the best answer to the conflict between

Israelis and Palestinians in two states, living side by side.

Now, Hain wonders if the moment for a two-state solution has passed and if it is time instead to look at a different scenario: what he calls a “common state” shared by the two peoples – in other words, a one-state solution.

“Ah,” many JC readers will say. “So, when Hain was in government, he was just paying lip service to Israel’s right to exist as a secure, independent state. All along, he actually believed in the old pro-Palestinian demand for a single state, in which the Zionist dream of Jewish self-determination would be swallowed up and forgotten. He’s no friend of ours after all.”

Such a view will be temptingly simple but unfair. Hain is clear in setting out his own credentials as a former Middle East minister under Tony Blair, one who worked closely with both Israeli and Palestinian leaders. He also underlines his understanding of what Israel is up against: the “unremitting hostility” of its neighbours, the state of “siege” the country has had to endure since its birth. He is explicit, too, that his past support for two states was sincere, that he believed it to be “the best plan for peace and the fairest outcome.”

But, now, reluctantly, Hain has concluded that time has all but run out for the two-state solution. He offers the familiar reasons: the serial failure of past negotiations; the Hamas-Fatah split; and, above all, the fact that “the land earmarked for a viable Palestinian state has been remorselessly occupied by Israeli settlers.” As others have put it, it’s hard for two people to agree to split a pizza when one is gobbling up slice after slice as they talk.

Doubtless many will dispute Hain’s conclusions, finding him premature in pronouncing two states near-dead. But whether he’s too pessimistic is not really the point. He is a mainstream political figure — with experience, in Belfast, of a bitter conflict also once deemed intractable — beginning to look seriously at an idea previously deemed beyond the pale. [My emphasis]

In that sense, his words are a warning...'

Whether Hain is up to his old "secular democratic state" trick for some agenda of his own, and indeed how far he will take it, remains, for the moment, immaterial. For the present Labour Party leadership has disowned his views.

'The Labour leadership has slapped down the former cabinet minister Peter Hain after he raised the possibility of a one-state solution in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians....

Labour criticised Hain, who served as Middle East minister between 1999 and 2001, after the New Statesman published extracts from a prepared speech in which he raises the possibility of a "common Israeli-Palestinian state"....

Critics will argue that creating a one-state solution would mark the end of the state of Israel, which was founded as a Jewish state. The declaration of the establishment of the state of Israel on 14 May 1948, signed by the founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, said: "We … hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the state of Israel."

Labour said: "Peter Hain does not speak for Labour on foreign affairs and his views on the Middle East peace process do not represent Labour party policy. Labour is fully committed to a two-state solution with a viable Palestinian state living side by side with Israel, and we support the ongoing work of the US secretary of state, John Kerry, to help restart negotiations towards achieving this goal."....'

It will be interesting to see how Hain will handle the issue, and what impact he will have on his party, when he's no longer MP for Neath but, as he presumably will be, a Labour life peer in the House of Lords.

Thursday, 30 January 2014

The vile Facebook page containing this, along with many other antisemitic cartoons (most attributed a Ben Garrison; but see a reader's comment below) that are reminiscent of the depravity peddled by such infamous judeophobes as Edouard Drumont with his La Libre Parole and Julius Streicher with his Der Stürmer, has been in operation only since 24 January. In that short time it has managed to amass over 700 "Likes" (727 at the time of writing).

It has been reported for the hate-site it is by a growing number of disgusted people. Among them is the indefatigable Shirlee Finn, who's no stranger to readers of my blog, and who herself blogs here.

Shirlee took the trouble to report every single one of the despicable posts on the despicable Facebook page in question.

She has been informed that, having carried out a review, Facebook sees no reason to take the page down.

Shirlee, who's since written Facebook a well-deserved "stinking" riposte, is so incensed that she is thinking of contacting the media about this.

I'm not surprised.

That Facebook sees nothing objectionable about the page beggars belief, and leaves a sickening feeling in the pit of the stomach.

Perhaps they have been swayed by the absurd introductory note at the top of the page:

The Merchant aka Le Happy Merchant is a famous meme Butthurts not welcome The page is just for fun,its not hate,so please dont be offened. [sic]

If such a piece of excrescence doesn't meet Facebook's criteria for offensiveness, what does?

And what does this say not only about Facebook's moral compass, but its commonsense?

Wednesday, 29 January 2014

Thanks to the kindness of a reader in London I'm now in possession of the Church of England newspaper editorial of 17 January, some of which so evidently irritated the anti-Zionist head of the Christian NGO Embrace the Middle East (see my post here).

Headed "Anti-Semitism on the rise in Europe", it's a robust editorial which, since it's now archival, and such a contrast to the toxin spewed out by some Christians regarding Israel, I feel compelled to reproduce in toto.

The editorial was, of course, written over a week prior to the disgraceful, despicable scenes witnessed in Paris on Sunday (see here) but is relevant to those scenes nonetheless:

'Fans flock to French comic Dieudonné on social media’ we are told by the BBC’s Georg Lentze of the BBC Social Media Monitoring Unit. Dieudonné has several convictions for anti-Semitic hate speech in France, and his very popular shows have recently been banned for this reason. All forms of social media are showing real spikes of interest and favour, YouTube, Facebook ‘likes’, tweets, a TV channel, all register enormous popularity. He unites the poor immigrant Muslim youth and the anti-immigrant National Front bloc. He taps into the growing anti-politics feeling rising in Europe. Dieudonné operates with a subtle ambiguity, as the New Yorker’s Alexander Stille reported: of a distinguished French Jewish journalist Dieudonné said: “When I hear him speak, Patrick Cohen, I say to myself, you see, the gas chambers … too bad.”

The meaning is clear, the grammar broken up to gain deniability. He has developed a cynical inversion of the Nazi salute that has gained such traction as to have been used at a Premiership football match to bait Jewish fans. The French authorities are concerned and trying to suppress the activities of this ‘comedian’ and activist, but that suppression stokes a victim image and social media popularity.

Reuters photo of the French demo

Hatred of Jews is now popular in France again, and barely 60 years after 1945. Dieudonné plans to use his Human Rights to free expression to overturn government bans on his very lucrative shows. The bitter irony is that the mass murder of the Holocaust was the driver for the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Dieudonné himself is a ‘holocaust denier’. In the UK there is a growing movement to boycott the state of Israel by academics who think that Israel is guilty of repressing Palestinians. The University and College Union of lecturers had invited Bongani Masuka, someone found guilty by the South African Human Rights Commission of anti-Semitic hate crimes, to speak at their conference, and the UCU Annual Congress voted against dissociating itself from his views. UCU refused to accept the definition of anti-Semitism drawn up by the EU Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia. A Jewish academic, Ronnie Fraser, felt harassed by the UCU’s action and complained of anti-Semitism to a Tribunal, which denied his complaint.

The Tribunal likened Fraser to a rugby player who was asking to be bashed and bruised in such a game, and so was entitled to a low degree of legal protection – an astonishing argument. The Church of England is also perilously close to adding respectability to his movement, as the Sunday Programme debate between Lucy Winkett and Alan Johnson showed: fashionable St James’ Piccadilly protested at the protective wall around Bethlehem, Johnson argued this protest ignored the realities of the context. Christians should beware of singling out Israel for protest, the Israel – Palestine spat, like Northern Ireland, is just one of many contested areas in the world, and the rising tide of hatred of the Jews is a toxic movement to make fashionable – again.'

Just how toxic a movement can be seen in a number of avowedly Christian sites, including pages on Facebook.

Regular readers of this blog may recall my post here drawing attention to the truly heinous rantings and ravings of a heavy-duty antisemitic Facebook page calling itself "Christians United for Peace", which wallows in medieval-like lies concerning Jewish beliefs and practices.

Earlier this week, as a result of sustained pressure brought to bear on Facebook by concerned individuals and groups, the egregiously misnamed "Christians United for Peace" page was removed from Facebook.

Today, however, the page was back up, with its previous nonsense intact, and spewing out its customary venom against Jews, Judaism and its texts, Israel and Zionism in such new posts as these (which like most if not all of the posts attract breathtakingly antisemitic comments from the site's avowedly Christian followers):

But this odious Facebook page is not the only avowedly Christian one that specialises in invective that crosses the line into antisemitism.

Similar group pages, includingthat belonging to Christian Friends of Palestine, are riddled with antisemitic posts from avowed Christians, posts such as these gems from an American with a Spanish-sounding name.

First:

Of all the people on planet Earth, the ones I love and respect most are the Palestinians!!!

Under any period of Human History on Earth there had been such brave and heroic people such as the Palestinians.

The entire Satanic Zionist world turned against them and there they are, without army, without weapons, without electricity, water etc... but they are steadily standing against the mightiest zionist countries of the world.

They don't need any super powers to support them!!! They already have the mightiest one on their side. They have God on their side!!!

Second, regarding the photo of a huge mass demonstration he’d posted:

This is not Egypt,

It is not Syria,

It is not Greece...

This is Spain and you won't see this in your News Channels because the Spanish Government is helping the Zionist Jooish Banks on behalf of the spanish population.

The Zionist Jooish Media keeps silent on this as long as the Government acts accordingly and in favor to Zionist rules!!!

Third, regarding Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper and former Australian prime minister John Howard:

If you still believe we live in a democratic western world, you are then just as fucked up as these poor bastard leaders reading a peach [i.e. speech] ordered by their masters the Zionist Jooz Of PissraHell.

Fourth, regarding Hitler:

He was a filthy Zionist Joo himself. Don't take me wrong.

I need you to drop the way of thinking all of us been programmed to think to be able to understand what I'm going to say.

What Hitler did to the Joos is called Collateral Dammage.

First of all Germans never killed 6million Joos and all of us by today and hopefully know it was our history's biggest lie.

He maybe did kill some of them to show the real Jooish haters of Germany that he was one of them.

The Jooish Rothchild family sponsored him since he was a kid and placed him in the Nazi Youth Camps so he could blend….

And then, from others, there are posts denying the Holocaust, impugning the Jewishness of Ashkenazim, smearing the Rothschilds, likening Israeli statesmen to the anti-Christ, and so on and so forth.

One recurrent theme that runs through many of these sites is this one, the profile picture of Christian Friends of Palestine:

Christians United for Peace puts it like this:

Strange, isn't it, how, despite the ruthless persecution of their co-religionists by Islamists in the Middle East, avowed Christians – and as we are only too aware, they include many (like the church authorities who enlisted the aid of Interpal in sponsoring the Piccadilly replica "Wall") who are unconnected with these dodgy Facebook groups – seek to make common cause with Islam by scapegoating Jews Zionists?

Tuesday, 28 January 2014

Our heroic young British friend of non-Jewish Iraqi origin and a companion went along to an Israel-demonising event in London. Uploading the following to YouTube, he explains:

"We were at an event called 'attack on the people' by Jeff Halper! As we filmed inside, we were told we didnt have permission. So we decided to film them as they were coming out. Obviously they saw that there were two of us, so they decided to harass us, come close to us, pushing and shoving. I apologise for the poor quality of the film."

Things begin to hot up from around 4.40 seconds ...

Remarks a commenter on YouTube:

'The intimidating bullies here are the HAMAS supporters amongst the so called British Liberal Left. Shame on them, for attacking 2 honest and brave and PEACEFUL men, one of whom is a British Muslim of Iraqi origin and who has taken the time and energy to learn the facts about the regional conflict always targeting Israel, and as a result feels compelled to stand up and be counted while being heard. RESPECT!'

To our young hero: Keep up the good work, but above all keep safe.

Meanwhile, from the heart of Londonistan, a Holocaust Day 2013 speaker has been posting vile messages about Jews (see here)
For Catherine Ashton's missing J word this Holocaust Memorial Day: see here

Monday, 27 January 2014

Yesterday, the day before Holocaust Memorial Day, numerous feral antisemites (described in this report as "neo-Nazis and Muslims") took to the streets of Paris for a so-called "Journée de la Haine Anti Juive" (Anti-Jewish Hate Day).

Hat tip to Jean Vercors for the following picture of a group of these ferals:

In the following video the loathsome scum can be seen giving the neo-Nazi "quenelle" salute popularised by the repellent Dieudonné, and can be heard chanting "Juif, la France n'est pas à toi!" ("Jew, France is not yours") and, in mockery of the Holocaust, "Shoah nanas".

To quote this site, where antisemitic videos by Dieudonné are to be found:

'Dieudonné's song "Shoah Nanas" (Holocaust Pineapples) comes from Annie Cordy's stupid song "Chaud cacao" (Hot cocoa), the original lyrics "Chaud cacao, cho chocolat" (Hot cocoa, cho chocolate) becoming "Sho Ananas, sho shoananas" (Sho Pinneapples, sho shopineapples) in Dieudonné's song. Just to explain that joke, hard to translate into English because "shopineapples" means nothing. The joke would work in English only if pineapple began with an "a" like ananas in French.'

No wonder the Jews of France don't feel secure in the land of liberty, equality, and fraternity any more (see here).

'President Obama and his Secretary of State John Kerry have a lot on their minds as they grapple with conflicts and political issues involving countries like Syria, Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Afghanistan – which no doubt must be causing massive overloading of their respective memory banks.

Yet this would be a lame excuse for them forgetting about – or seeking to minimise – the existence and crucial importance of the letters exchanged on 14 April 2004 between President Bush and Israel’s then Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, who died recently after languishing in a coma for seven years.

These letters enabled courageous and highly dangerous decisions being taken by Sharon to kick start President Bush’s stalled 2003 Road Map – whose goal had been to end the Jewish-Arab conflict by 2005.

President Bush's letter provided the catalyst – and the political justification – for Israel unilaterally evacuating the entire Jewish population of 8000 from Gaza and withdrawing Israel’s army totally from there – without any preconditions or undertakings being sought from the Palestinian Authority.

The Presidential letter set out the framework that Bush would support in negotiations between Israel and the PLO – conditions that Obama cannot possibly now discard as Kerry finalises his own framework agreement.

1. The borders of any Palestinian Arab State would not encompass the entire West Bank despite successive Arab leaders having demanded this outcome for the previous 37 years,

2. Jewish towns and villages in the West Bank would be incorporated into the borders of Israel

3. The Arabs would have to forego their demand to be given the right to allow millions of Arabs to emigrate to Israel and

4. Israel’s existence as a Jewish State would be non-negotiable

Bush's commitments to Sharon were approved – almost unanimously – by both the US House of Representatives and the Senate.

It didn't take too long however for these Congress-endorsed commitments to be downplayed by Bush and his advisors.

In an editorial published on 14 May 2008, former Jerusalem Post editor David Horovitz revealed the extent of the American resistance to remaining bound by President Bush's 2004 letter following a meeting with Bush in the White House with a group of Israeli journalists:

“Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, however, has been known to minimise the significance of this four-year-old letter. Just last week, for instance, she told reporters that the 2004 letter “talked about realities at that time. And there are realities for both sides….

Bush’s National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley has also given briefings to the effect that Israel had tried to overstate the importance of a rather vague letter, which was issued at a time when Sharon was seeking to bolster support for the pullout from Gaza.

And in answering my question, Bush did not at first even realise that I was referring to the 2004 letter. Hadley, who was also in the Oval Office, had to prompt him. “Okay, the letters,” the president then said, remembering.”

This was far worse and more sinister than mere memory loss. An attempt was being made – as early as 2008 – to renege on America’s clear and unequivocal commitments given to Israel as the price for Israel’s total evacuation of Gaza.

Israel had already paid a high price relying on Bush’s Congress-endorsed letter. Gaza had become a de facto terrorist State – with Hamas firmly entrenched as the governing authority.

Israel had – since its evacuation of Gaza in 2005 – been subjected to a sustained barrage of rockets and mortars fired indiscriminately into Israeli population centres from Gaza by a bewildering variety of terrorist groups and sub-groups who would have had no chance of operating so freely from Gaza if the Israeli Army had remained there.

Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert – who succeeded Sharon – had neither forgotten nor overlooked the critical significance of President Bush’s letter when agreeing to resume negotiations with the Palestinian Authority in 2007.

At the international conference held in Annapolis in November 2007 to announce a breakthrough in the resumption of those negotiations, Olmert told Bush and the world leaders gathered there that:

“The negotiations will be based on previous agreements between us, U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the road map and the April 14, 2004 letter of President Bush to the Prime Minister of Israel.”

The subsequent failure of those negotiations can be directly attributed to the Palestinian Authority's refusal to countenance the Bush commitments made to Sharon.

As Obama gets ready to approve Kerry's framework agreement, he and Kerry need to have their memory banks updated to remind them of the importance of honouring Bush's commitments.

Any attempt by Obama and Kerry to resile from or circumvent Bush’s Congress-endorsed commitments to Sharon will torpedo any prospects for success in the current negotiations – leaving Obama and Kerry with no one but themselves to blame for bringing the current negotiations to an ignominious end.

The idea that any American President would not consider himself bound by the written commitments of a former President – as endorsed by Congress – would undermine America's very democratic foundations.

Disavowing the Bush commitments would prejudice the integrity of American diplomacy world wide – ensuring any political decisions by the current administration would not be worth the paper they are written on.

Sharon has left behind a bitter pill – which Obama and Kerry must reluctantly swallow.

Terror Groups Eyeing Israel's Destruction from inside NGOs

Two stalwarts go sleuthing:

For their findings cliick on image

"The research suggests that antisemitism is the fuel that primes the PSC engine"

To read the research report click on image

'For as long as these antisemites wrap themselves up in the Palestinian flag, too many people are willing to turn a blind eye. Only against Jews is this type of racism openly tolerated. It is flourishing in schools, colleges, universities, unions and in city councils. In fact, so rampant is the disease now, in some settings you can be ostracised if you do not partake in the frenzy yourself. Bashing Jews has becomes a trendy position for the ignorant social justice warrior. "Palestinianism" is a viral "ponzi scheme" and as it spreads, it carries antisemitism in the undergrowth.' David Collier (2017)

'This new rise in antisemitism, which I had thought long dead, was not shaven-headed white imbeciles from the far right. It was Muslims, a large chunk of it.... Suddenly I grasped that the British far left didn’t want people to know about antisemitism because it pointed the finger at people they really, really liked. From that moment on, it all fell into place.... Time and again the same tropes emerged, the same sort of stuff that Streicher and Goebbels would have commended – and uttered.... And from that a whole bunch of other stuff emerged: the old blood libel business (a favourite of the repulsive Jenny Tonge).... Nice, avuncular, Jeremy Corbyn, with his peace badges, happily laying a wreath at the graveside of Palestinian terrorists who murdered innocent Jewish athletes, oh, and much much more.... It is the same antisemitism, exactly the same: the obsession with Israel to the exclusion of everything else, the conspiracy theory paranoias, the derangement.... Here’s the test – if you cannot see the flagrant racism in the BDS movement, and if you are obsessed with the perfidy of the Middle East’s only democracy to the exclusion of all else, you are an antisemite. That means a good proportion of the Labour Party, including the leader, and almost all of Momentum: no brown shirts, no marching bands, but the same old filth, dressed in the clothes of a polytechnic geography lecturer.'Rod Liddle (2018)

Pro-Israel Down Under

Shalom and Welcome to my blog!I'm the little Aussie blogger who took the screenshot and broke the story of Stephen Sizer's notorious 9/11 post, and I've since broken two other stories that subsequently went viral, one Australia-wide and one, thanks to the sterling work of two other bloggers, worldwide. I remain very surprised and very honoured to have been co-winner, Best Pro-Israel Blog, Hasby Awards, 2013Please "Like" me on Facebook; my Facebook page ishere

'In a region where women are stoned, gays are hanged, Christians are persecuted, Israel ... is different.... Of the 300 million Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, only Israel's Arab citizens enjoy real democratic rights.... Israel is not what is wrong about the Middle East. Israel is what is right about the Middle East.' Bibi Netanyahu (20 Iyar 5771; 24 May 2011)Scroll to end for more quotations

Tired of anti-Balfour agitprop?

Click image for link

Balfour and Beyond

Click image for link

Try this for Sizer

Sizer 101. Click image for link

'Before the June 1967 Six Day War, there were no such things as "settlements". Palestinians were trying to destroy and displace Israel anyhow. The core problem is not, and never was, "settlements," but the right of Israel (or any non-Muslim nation) to exist inside any borders in that part of the world.If you take a stand that is based on a lie, then that stand cannot succeed. If you try to oppose antisemitism but pretend it is the same thing as "Islamophobia," then the structure on which you have made your stand will totter and all your aspirations will fail. If you try to make a stand based on the idea that settlement construction rather than the intransigence of the Palestinians to the existence of a Jewish state is what is holding up a peace deal, then facts will keep on intruding.' Douglas Murray (31 December 2016)https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9685/britain-little-lies

BDS is Antisemitic

Click image to learn why

The Bigotry & Immorality of BDS

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'Islamophobia does NOT come from the same wellspring of hatred as antisemitism. Antisemitism is a true prejudice because the hatred and demonisation it promotes derive entirely from lies and a repudiation of rationality itself. Islamophobia is a false allegation of prejudice which is deployed to silence rational criticism based on actual facts about attitudes and practices within the Islamic world. [L]ethally compromised even-handedness is to misunderstand, and thus minimise, antisemitic attitudes and behaviour while shutting down legitimate and necessary discussion of the threat from the Islamic world – even to demonise as “Islamophobic” anyone who draws attention to the extent and consequences of Muslim antisemitism.' Melanie Phillips (14 December 2016)

"Selling a house to a Jew is a betrayal of Allah"

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Maps of Mendacity & Mischief

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These misleading maps were deliberately prepared to date from 1946 – intentionally papering over the momentous events that had occurred between 1917 and 1945. Attempts to unravel binding precepts of international law established between 1917 and 1945 – and failing to insist on their being upheld and enforced – has a lot to do with the sorry situation the world finds itself in today.David Singer (2016)

How They Twist the Truth!

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Jews have re-assumed the role of the canary in the mine and are the first to be targeted, but the world would face the same threat if Jews did not exist. Israel has been at the front lines confronting Islamic extremism but has received scant support... For Jews, the writing has been on the wall for a long time. The virulence of the antisemitic hatred closing in on Jews in Europe (and elsewhere) is horrifying... Europe is today facing a crisis as serious as the confrontation with Nazism. If Western leaders continue behaving like Chamberlain and fail to stand up to this global threat, it could usher in a new Dark Age in which the Judeo-Christian culture is subsumed by primitive barbarism. The writing is on the wall Isi Leibler (12 January 2015)

Expose The Lies!

There is a war of lies and deceit on the internet generating unbelievable hate by denigrating and delegitimising the legal rights conferred on the Jewish people by the League of Nations in 1922 and the United Nations in 1945. The idea that there are two narratives on the Arab-Jewish conflict is rubbish. There is only one – the factual truth that details the return of the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in its ancient biblical, ancestral and historic homeland after 3500 years of dispersion with the unanimous endorsement of the nation states then comprising the League of Nations.... Generals can’t fight a war without soldiers. Jews around the world need to join the fight or vacate the internet to the Jew-haters and their lies that repeated often enough eventually become accepted as truth.David Singer (2016)

Exposing Lies

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The "Apartheid" Slur

The division of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) into three separate areas “A”, “B” and “C” was agreed on by Israel and the PLO pursuant to the Oslo Accords.95% of the West Bank Arabs live in Areas A and B and their daily lives are under the total administration and control of the PLO since the Palestinian Authority was disbanded by Abbas in January 2013. The PLO has total security control in A and shares security control in B with Israel. Israel has total administrative and security control in C.Israel is entitled to and will continue to take responsibility for the security of Jews living in the West Bank.Jews were given the legal right to settle in the West Bank under article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the UN Charter. They did so for decades until they were driven out in 1947 and not able to return there until 1967.There are Arab roads only in the West Bank that Jews are not allowed to use. Jews are also forbidden from entering Area “A”. Selling land to Jews is forbidden by the PLO under pain of death. The PLO runs the daily lives of 95% of the West Bank Arabs and Hamas runs the daily lives of 100% of the Gazan Arabs. They have been under occupation – and subjugation – by these two evil groups for the last ten years and given no say in their future or any opportunity to elect others to lead them following the disastrous political decisions of their leaders over the past ten years. Hamas and the PLO do not accept the continued existence of a Jewish State and call for its disappearance. The narratives did not begin in 1948 – they began in about 1917. How do you make peace with an enemy that has been obsessed with not recognising any Jewish national rights in former Palestine for the last 100 years?David Singer (2016)

Telling the Truth

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The Jews of the Holy Land ... are surrounded by hostile states 650 times their territory and sixty times their population. Yet their last, best hope of ending two millennia of international persecution - the State of Israel - has somehow survived. When, during the Second World War, the island of Malta came through three terrible years of bombardment and destruction, it was rightly awarded the George Cross for bravery. Today, Israel should be awarded a similar decoration for defending democracy, tolerance and Western values against a murderous onslaught that has lasted twenty times as long.Andrew Roberts (historian)

A voice of courage & reason

He knows, y'know

An Aussie demo against BDS

On the left, black people are usually allowed to define what’s racism; women can define sexism; Muslims are trusted to define Islamophobia. But when Jews call out something as antisemitic, leftist non-Jews feel curiously entitled to tell Jews they’re wrong, that they are exaggerating or lying or using it as a decoy tactic – and to then treat them to a long lecture on what anti-Jewish racism really is. Jonathan Freedland (The Guardian, 29 April 2016)

An awkward fact for some!

Socialist thought was tainted from its very origins with the heavy baggage of anti-Jewish stereotypes. Robert Wistrich, From Ambivalence to Betrayal:The Left, the Jews, and Israel (2012)

BDS hypocrisy!

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Israel is understandably obsessed with security, but its greatest security lies ultimately not in the Israeli Defence Forces, but in political warfare.... Most of the world is not deeply interested in what happens in Israel, and probably does not want to be deluged with legalistic defences of particular actions. What it wants is a clear, calm, repeated case. It is a case – aimed more at public opinion than at foreign ministries – about freedom, democracy, a Western way of life and the need for the whole of the free world to fight terrorism. Sometimes you hear Israelis say: “It doesn’t matter what we say. The whole world is against us.” You can see why they say it, for they are indeed unfairly treated. But when they say it, they are uttering a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they won’t say what needs saying, no one else will say it for them. Charles Moore (2010)

Once again the armies of the Arab nations are coordinating their military efforts to destroy Israel - whatever they say about wishing merely to regain the lost territories.... [I]f the present Arab offensive had been launched at the pre-1967 frontiers, then the Israelis would indeed have been fighting to avoid annihilation. It seems now that the Israelis were right to maintain the ceasefire lines gained in 1967, and that to do so is the only guarantee of their continued safety.Alan Sillitoe (The Times, 11 October 1973)

A nuclear Iran threatens our existence

Iran and ISIS are competing for the crown of militant Islam... In this deadly game of thrones, there’s no place for America or for Israel, no place for Christians, Jews or Muslims who don’t share the Islamist medieval creed, no rights for women, no freedom for anyone... [T]he greatest danger facing our world is the marriage of militant Islam with nuclear weapons. To defeat ISIS and let Iran get nuclear weapons would be to win the battle, but lose the war. We can’t let that happen...[T]he days when the Jewish people remained passive in the face of genocidal enemies, those days are over. We are no longer scattered among the nations, powerless to defend ourselves. We restored our sovereignty in our ancient home. And the soldiers who defend our home have boundless courage. For the first time in 100 generations, we, the Jewish people, can defend ourselves....Even if Israel has to stand alone, Israel will stand. But ... I know that America stands with Israel... You stand with Israel, because you know that the story of Israel is not only the story of the Jewish people but of the human spirit that refuses again and again to succumb to history’s horrors. Bibi Netanyahu (12 Adar 5775; 3 March 2015)

The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions, of people, and there is no refugee problem.... [N]o one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees.... Other nations - when they are defeated - survive and recover, but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed.... [A]s it goes with Israel, so it will go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us.Eric Hoffer (1968)

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אם תרצו , אין זו אגדה

Most of the present Arab countries were given their freedom after the 1914-18 War, or after the 1939-45 War.... Yet to listen to Arab spokesmen one might think that they had been cheated ... because they have not also got Israel. Israel is only .2 per cent of the land where Arab States have been established. Surely no fair-minded man can begrudge the Jews their own promised land when it is remembered that for every 2 acres that went to make up Israel, 1,000 acres became Arab.... Why is there an Arab refugee problem? The oil-rich countries have the money. There is no shortage of land, and the Israelis have the technical knowledge to show how it could be developed and made fertile. Bring those things together and the problem could be solved. 3rd Earl of Balfour (1968)

January 7, 2015 has already its place in the history of infamy, but also will be the date when the defenders of freedom and democracy will rise and pay tribute to those who died for their freedom and ours. Therefore, we must not forget on which side we are and who are our allies in the defense of the West and its values. Whether we admit it or not, the West is at war with an enemy who will not stop to destroy us...The State of Israel boasts a commandment that, in one of the darkest hours in the fight for liberty Winston Churchill taught: "Never give up". Israel has proven to be a key ally in the fight against Islamism and also an example of how a liberal democracy can resist the jihadist stake and thrive as a Western nation ... Not only France but also all the West should look to Israel to defeat Islamism...friendsofisraelinitiative.org

[I]t’s impossible to believe that an active antisemite wouldn’t – if only opportunistically – seek out somewhere to nestle in the manifold pleats of Israel-bashing, whether in generally diffuse anti-Zionism, or in more specific Boycott and Divestment Campaigns, Israeli Apartheid Weeks, End the Occupation movements and the like....[T]ell me that not a single Jew-hater finds the activity congenial, that criticising Israel can “never” be an expression of Jew-hating, not even when it takes the form of accusing Israeli soldiers of harvesting organs...Howard Jacobson (The Independent, 27 May 2013)

What has happened to the 800,000 Jews who lived for over 2000 years in the Arab lands ...? Where are they in Arab society today? You dare talk of racism when I can point with pride ... to the fact that it is as natural for an Arab to serve in public office in Israel as it is incongruous to think of a Jew serving in any public office in an Arab country, indeed being admitted to many of them. Chaim Herzog (6 Kislev 5736; 10 November 1975)

I stand with Israel, I stand with the Jews.... I defend their right to exist, to defend themselves, to not let themselves be exterminated a second time. And, disgusted by the antisemitism of many Europeans ... I am shamed by this shame that dishonours my country and Europe.Oriana Fallaci

For Western countries to side with those who question Israel's legitimacy, for them to play games in international bodies with Israel's vital security issues, for them to appease those who oppose Western values, rather than robustly to stand up in defence of those values, is not only a grave moral mistake, but a strategic error of the first magnitude. Israel is a fundamental part of the West. The West is what it is thanks to its Judeo-Christian roots. If the Jewish element of those roots is lost and Israel is lost, then we are lost too. Jose Maria Aznar

Israel is, for us, a normal and a special country. A normal country, because it is just like any other democracy. A special country, because the Jewish culture, which eventually became the Judeo-Christian culture of the dignity of man, is the conceptual foundation of liberalism and democracy. This is why attacking Israel is tantamount to attacking Europe and the West. This is also why disputing Israel's legitimacy and its right to existence means questioning democracy. And this is why we are Friends of Israel. By defending Israel, we are defending ourselves.Marcello Pera

Israel ... is beset today by a unique combination of threats. It must defend its people from attack while defending its very right to exist. No other nation in the world faces this dual challenge. To deny Israel's right to confront some of the world's most vicious terrorist groups in order to ensure the safety of its citizens is to corrode international norms from within ... The assault on Israel is one part of a more general assault on the West, on democracy, and on the moral and cultural heritage that grew from the fruitful interaction of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome ... Should these efforts succeed, similar efforts will certainly be turned against other western democracies.George Weigel

Apart from America itself, Israel still stands as the world's brightest model of national self-liberation based on ideals of individual responsibility and human freedom. Israel's ability to withstand Arab attempts to destroy it in one of the longest and most lop-sided wars ever fought serves as an indelible testimony to the strength of democratic culture.... We know from the past that the West paid dearly for ignoring Hitler's war against the Jews. One can only hope it will not pay as dearly for having ignored or underestimated for so long the Arab war against Israel and the Jews. Ruth Wisse

The choice before us is not between victory and defeat, but between victory and annihilation. We therefore have not the slightest intention of allowing the re-creation of the conditions of vulnerability in which we found ourselves, abandoned and alone, in the summer of 1967. Diplomat Michael Comay (1970)

I am duty-bound to defend freedom, culture, peaceful coexistence, the civic education of children, and all the principles that the Tablets of the Law have rendered universal. Principles which Islamic fundamentalism systematically destroys. This means that, since I am a Gentile, a journalist and a leftist, I have a triple moral commitment to Israel. Because, if Israel were to be vanquished, modernity, culture and freedom would also be crushed. Even though the world has failed to wake up to this fact, Israel's struggle is the world's struggle. Pilar Rahola

About Me

I'm a writer/researcher, with many academic books and articles under my own name. Daphne Anson is my blogging alias. Combining the names of two ships, it's a moniker of special significance to me - I'm a naval history buff. I use an alias owing to a perceived need to keep my blogging and professional identities separate. An Aussie, I've long been interested in
politics and foreign affairs, having studied International Relations in the USA and Britain for my first degree, and I also hold a doctorate. I began blogging in response to the exponential rise in antisemitism and hostility to Israel in the wake of the Mavi Marmara affair.
Another reason I use an alias: http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/08/alias-two-ships-daphne-anson.html

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The spiritual awakening which Jews experienced almost without exception last June must not be allowed to become a sealed and finished episode.... Support must be rallied among men of goodwill and their governments if we are to reach that secure and just peace in the attainment of which Israel has never ceased to believe. President Zalman Shazar (1968)

Our judicial system is one of the best in the whole world. Our democracy is the only one in the Middle East.... Just imagine, what would have happened if the Arabs had, like us, accepted the Partition resolution? There would be a Palestinian State living side by side in peace, security, and, I can add, prosperity with the State of Israel, 62 years later. [C]ome to Israel, and realize how small Israel is and what a wonderful place it is. Diplomat Gabriella Shalev (2010)

Israel's Arab citizens are the only Arabs in the Middle East who enjoy genuine civic and religious rights. Religious freedom is protected in Israel as nowhere else, tragically, in the Middle East. And civil rights, of course, there's a supreme court judge who is an Arab, ministers including in my government who are Arabs, Druze, and members of parliament who are Arabs and so on. I would like to see more involvement of Arabs in civil life.Bibi Netanyahu on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show (5 Nov. 2017)